August 16th started as just a normal Thursday, but changed around 10:30 CST. Many travel blogs and SecretFlying on Twitter started reporting of a business class deal from Hong Kong Airlines. Los Angeles to Shanghai in business for $560.
Call me intrigued.
I immediately started to look at Google flights after reading their posts. It became clear it was also open to other cities like Bali or Bangkok. Unfortunately, my searches didn’t bring out the price to $560. I still felt good about seeing flights at $670 though, which is an incredible deal to fly 20 hours in lie flat seats.
I zeroed in on some dates in early December. A quick text to Elli to confirm that she was game. Of course she was! So now the hard part started: Hoping that the booking actually goes through and that it will be honored by the airline. Normal prices on other airlines would be charging $4,000 and up per person for similar tickets.
Expedia was the website of choice for this booking, as Hong Kong airlines website barely even loaded. Assuming lots of people were also trying to get in on that deal through the HK Airlines site. Expedia worked with no issues and within a few minutes I had a confirmation email along with ticket numbers. Score.
At that point the waiting game started to see if they would honor those cheap fares. Surprisingly within 24 hours the below was posted by Hong Kong Airlines.
Don’t wait to figure out all the details.
As always with such fares you have to be quick to book. Usually within hours airlines figure out the mistake and pull them. In this case it was alive for about two hours and won’t be coming back. The side bar shows a funny back and forth on twitter.
Now the fun part begins and we will be planning our trip.
Yesterday I was able to confirm our seat assignments through their live chat. We selected middle seats together, often referred to as honeymoon seats. While we won’t be able to see out the window, being close together is more important to us.
Our itinerary will take us from Los Angeles to Hong Kong and onward to Bangkok. Hong Kong Airlines also flies their new A350 aircraft and business class cabin on this route and based on online reviews it looks like there’s a very comfortable ride is in store for us.
Summary:
We are excited we were able to jump on this deal. Even though we paid a bit more then the original $560 reported, we are feeling great about this. $670 is incredible in our opinion, even if we have to get ourselves to Los Angeles first. We certainly can’t wait to explore Thailand.
Any suggestions on what to do in Bangkok or Thailand?
Wow, your wife sounds pretty great. You should make sure to hang onto her.